…Will probably never go away as-is with her current design.
This topic is about her M1 and M2, not Resurrect.
I wanted to throw my opinion to the wind on how you could maintain her themes and conveniences while breaking her free from essentially being a hood ornament for a Pharah or Ashe.
Change Mercy’s M1 and M2… Into concentration based AoEs. Click M1 to show an AoE indicator, then click again and hold to project an area of healing of similar size to a Soldier pack. M2 for the same, but for her damage boost.
You can hold both for two active areas.
Where they overlap, the color changes and they instead grant damage resistance with no healing or damage boost within the area that they overlap. This does two things, it prevents stacking healing and damage, and it provides a new utility to give some needed variety.
Holding M1 or M2 could maintain that concentration even when you switch to her pistol, pressing the other non held button fires the pistol. Allowing her to trade 1 of her areas for use of her pistol, giving a lot of dynamic options on the table for a Mercy to utilize.
Animation change could be where she holds her staff up with a yellow glow for healing, or turns it around for a blue glow. While sustaining both, she holds the staff horizontally with both ends glowing.
The AoE’s could have a small arrow pointing in the direction of Mercy to maintain the current mechanic of knowing where the mercy is that’s providing the support which prevents Mercy from dropping the areas and hiding. Which could also be mitigated by halving the effectiveness if Mercy breaks line of sight with the areas.
To make this concept even more engaging and provide another limiter as well as add more skill ceiling, each area could have an initial spike of effectiveness you and teammates would need to learn how to capitalize on and how to time correctly, and then a decaying effect that could be represented by the aoe visibly fading away as it tapers off. This means the Mercy can’t just keep holding M1/M2 and must take an active role in keeping their placement similar to what she’s doing now. Though this is in addition to how she would have to do that anyway as the fight moves forward or backwards.
This also means that she can exploit gamesense and game knowledge- in other words SKILL that isn’t dependent on being a COD player- to know where best to place either or both areas and both can be utilized to their fullest extent. As-is, damage boost is awkward in that it’s almost always necessary to hold M1 down so you don’t often get to use it, except when she’s being a slave to a cheese comp like Pharmercy.
Speaking of which, this would also break the Pharmercy combo allowing Pharah to shine on her own and be balanced accordingly without worrying about pharmercy being overwhelming and I would imagine it would be replaced by Zenyatta since his healing can very easily be applied to her while his discord orbs can achieve a similar effect to Mercy’s boost, the Zen calling out targets for the Pharah.
I strongly believe these changes both maintain her identity, solve major problems, and greatly improve the enjoyment of the character both for players and recipients, and of course elevates her as more of a team player and less of a hood ornament like her current design pins her as like a piece of equipment a DPS brings into the match.
You might suggest that this steps on Lucio’s toes, but Lucio would have the much larger area of effect and his aoe would be mobile, Mercy’s would not. Not to mention Lucio’s main benefit is his unique speed boost.
Mercy’s would be a game of maintaining placement and up time of her targeted areas and watching where to provide a spike on its initial placement. This spike would also provide a small amount of needed burst heal for her that is necessary for healers.
When in her Valkyrie Ultimate, she could possibly place multiple areas and does not have to hold the button down. This would allow her to keep her role as support and let her whip out her pistol after placing her AoEs which lends itself to the themes of an ultimate named Valkyrie.
Another note! Each AoE placement could leave a “Sprite” or “Soul”, a wisp like when a teammate dies. Allowing her to Guardian Angel towards it. This would open up a lot of independence and utility for her, room for skilled players to capitalize on.
The AoE’s could give Mercy some level of support to help her pull off her obnoxiously awkward E Resurrect ability, by placing a Healing sprite or both for a Damage Resistance field on top of a fallen ally to help her pull off the resurrect.
I feel like my suggestion will help Mercy feel more alive and engaging in ALL fields and help solve ALL her problems I know of all the while making her play in a familiar way with the same core flavors.
Take aways:
- Makes her more engaging.
- Maintains the heart of her mechanics.
- Breaks Pharmercy without sacrificing anything.
- Pharah can be balanced independently without fearing pharmercy.
- Can be utilized in a way to make Resurrect better indirectly.
- Greatly increases skill ceiling without removing the low skill floor a lot of people like.
- (Optionally) gives Mercy a bit of a healing burst necessary for any healer.
- Gives Mercy much needed independence. (Even more so if AoEs included a suggested Sprite/Soul)
- Lets Mercy fully explore the possibilities of her themes and make use of all her kit.
- Makes Mercy far more of a team player than a pocket. - The primary goal of this suggestion that lead to this thought process.
- Solves ALL Mercy’s issues I could think about.